Harlan T. Beverly writes from Austin, Texas about Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Business for Engineers and Other Logical Thinkers.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

The Lean Startup Toilet Bowl Trap of Getting Nowhere Slowly

Progress. That's a nice word. "We're making progress...", says the workers cutting the road through the forest. Then, a wise leader climbs a tree and says "but you're going the wrong way!"

That's all fine and good, and a good lean startup does this often. It's called "Pivot" and it's central to the Lean Startup concept. But what happens when you just keep pivoting? Aren't you chasing your tail? Suddenly, you have a road to nowhere, or worse, a road that goes in circles.

This is a TRAP! Your "lean startup" just got into a slowly dieing spiral of doom. Your dream is getting flushed in the toilet because you keep climbing that tree and realizing that you're going the wrong way!

Here's an example of the Lean Startup in the Toilet Bowl Trap:

You build a website and collect some preorders (yeah, progress!)

You ship the preorders and get feedback from customers that they love/hate certain features (yeah, progress!)

You fix the product based on the feedback, and nobody buys it (yeah, progress!)

You PIVOT to a new product and collect some preorders (yeah, progress!)

Jump to step #2, repeat, all the way to the toilet's flush.

So, how do you get out of this toilet bowl trap?

First, remember, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results.

You have to do something different!

In many cases, the problem is not 'your product' or 'your idea', but the marketing instead!

Instead of constantly pivoting on "product" you might need to pivot on some of the other 4 P's of Marketing:

Place: Maybe your lack of orders is because it's not available where the customers are... and particularly where the customers are that are in the buying mood for what you offer!

Price: Maybe your lack of orders is related to the pricing or pricing structure of your product. Maybe you need to sell it in parts, or with different options. It could even be too low!

Promotion: Maybe your lack of orders is related to how you are attracting customers. Sure, you're getting a lot of 'views', but are those customers: the right ones, in the right mood (buying), with the right goals, with the right problems, with enough education about your solution, etc.? Or Maybe, your just not reaching your right audience, or just not 'appealing' enough to their needs (messaging).

So, avoid the Toilet Bowl Trap: run Lean Startup Experiments on more than just 'the product'...

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About Me

In 2005, Harlan founded and was CEO of Bigfoot Networks, Inc., a gaming
hardware company, which was acquired by Qualcomm in 2011. After Bigfoot,
Harlan founded and was CEO of Karmaback, Inc., a very successful Social
Networking SaaS company, which was acquired in 2013. Harlan then worked for Creeris Ventures as a virtual VP of Marketing for
their 9 portfolio companies. Harlan is currently CEO of Key Ingredient, a high-tech Cloud technology company, focused on delivering Food Recipes via the Cloud. Harlan also recently completed his PhD in
Business and regularly lectures at U.T. Austin on Business, and is
passionate about the convergence of hard science with Business.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Harlan worked at Intel and was
responsible for architecture and development of corporate server
networking products, including the world's first 10-Gigabit Ethernet
adapter. He later joined start-up Britestream Networks and helped
develop a 100% CPU off-load SSL security solution. Harlan has over 12
patents from his engineering career, has been published in dozens of
books and articles.

In his 12 years leading companies and teams, Harlan has successfully
launched 5 hardware and 15 software products including the Killer NIC,
2007 Network Product of the Year (CPU Magazine). Harlan has also raised
over $20MM in venture financing in the challenging intersection of
entertainment and technology.